


when i go flying off the edge

by transvav



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Sibling Bonding, Spoilers for ep 68, after canon aftermath, just a lil bit tho, twins!, wow i wrote this in like 5 hours can you believe it, yeet kiddos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-02
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-12-10 02:02:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11681697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transvav/pseuds/transvav
Summary: (you go flying off as well)Taako knows. Lup knows. And then it happens that at some point, they don't.(a look at the twins)





	when i go flying off the edge

**Author's Note:**

> wow i dont. write a lot of fic outside of what i'm comfortable with so here you go have fun kids.  
> minor spoilers for ep 68 at like the very very end

When Taako is 15 years old his twin tells him, “I’m not a boy.”

And that’s that.

The thing is, it’s not a surprise. And Lup knows that. Taako always _knows_ things, when it comes to Lup, just like she knows things when it comes to him, because that’s how they work.

So Taako takes her hands in his and smiles, and pulls her inside to start working on some cookies to celebrate. “Alright, goofus, chocolate chip or peanut butter?”

(She’ll say both. He knows, and he already mixed the dough that way.)

 

When they’re a bit older, Lup finds Taako trying on one of her skirts. Someone had bought it for her but she’d shoved it in her closet, saying something about she still pretty much just preferred pants. It’s black with some type of purple and green iridescence, mid waisted and knee length, pleated nicely.

She finds Taako wearing it over a pair of stockings he’d bought when he thought she wasn’t looking and some fucking kick ass knee high heels. “It’s not practical,” she says, and he shoots her a glare, unphased by her sudden appearance. She grins. “But you look really good.”

“Yeah?” he asks, and there’s an edge of vulnerability to his voice. Lup knows him and her grin softens to something more sincere.

“Yeah,” she tells him and notices how he stands just a little bit taller. “But honestly, are you gonna learn to _fight_ in those?”

(He will. She knows, and she learns along with him, because there’s no way she’s letting him go around looking taller than her.)

 

Taako is interested in transmutation. Lup is interested in evocation.

Lup blows up their campfire with a wand she got from the store in the last village they’d been to and she sets the forest around them ablaze and she watches with stars in her eyes, laughing as she feels the warmth of it on her skin, Taako screaming in delight too.

Taako turns tree branches into chocolate and it tastes kinda woodlike the first few times but eventually he presents it to his sister and it’s the perfect mix of bitter and sweet with subtle hints of something spicy, and he giggles high pitch when she says it’s fucking delicious.

The two of them experiment and teach each other things- Taako fires magic missile at the wagon of some thief and Lup turns sugar into salt and completely ruins the asshole innkeeper’s coffee.

They run and they train and they _stick together_ \- that’s the important part, is that they stick together, and they know each other enough to always do that.

There’s a recruiter in a red jacket for some research center in the next city over and Lup grabs a flier, grinning, and turns to her brother.

“Hey Taako,” she says, and already knows he’s gonna say yes, “let’s be fucking _space wizards._ ”

(The symbol for the IPRE is a circle of rainbow circles. ‘The interstellar planes’ someone tells them. Sure, like they’re meant to believe everyone working here isn’t some type of gay. _They_ sure aren’t straight.)

 

Merle, Magnus and Taako get on like a field of dead grass in the middle of a fantasy Southern California summer- that is to say, a field on fucking fire. As much as Taako complains about Magnus is a rough and tumble human with no concern for how he looks and how Merle is a crusty old dwarf with serious shoe choice problems, Lup knows that her brother’s making _really good friends_.

And she’s _glad_ , because most people don’t really get Taako, not in the way he wants to be gotten. Magnus and Merle seem to, though, and that’s good.

The team is hand selected and on it are herself and her brother, and Merle and Magnus, and Davenport and Barry and Lucretia. It’s a good circle of people and Lup can see herself being comfortable here.

Taako already is. He doesn’t have to tell her that, because she can see it in the way he smiles and snickers and gets _way_ too offended at something trivial.

(The seven of them toast their first night on the Starblaster- in mourning, partially, but also to a new adventure. Taako laughs when Davenport and Barry get wine drunk and start singing Fantasy Alicia Keys. Lucretia keeps writing it down, laughing too, and when Lup smiles at her she smiles softly back.)

 

Taako watches as Lup falls in love.

It’s a subtle but bright thing and Taako smiles whenever Lup does. Love grows with time, and time is just nothing but fuckin’ endless here, on and on and on with a million potential chances to do something right. After all they’ve done and all they’ve been through she deserves something good, and now she _has it_. She never gets around to telling him when they start dating, but that’s because Taako already knows, and they’ve fallen into a pattern about it, not to say anything if the other knows.

But worlds later, she asks him for the perfect day. She tells him why, later on. He’s shaking in his shoes but smiles for her anyways. It’s not like he’s hiding it well. It’s not like he’s hiding it at all. He knows she knows.

(Later, later, and later still, he’ll be grateful when she’s still there, still breathing, because of that second life, that second chance.)

 

When it’s over and the world is saved, the two of them realize they’ve fallen out of their pattern.

It’s just that-

Even though Taako _knows_ she’s smiling when she’s looking at him sometimes, it’s a weird feeling, because this is someone he has completely forgotten, someone he had lost for what feels like forever. And to know something about someone is so out of place, so foreign to him, that it’s thrown him completely off balance.

It seems like it’s thrown her off balance too, and she comes to him, one night, back in her own body and skin, and throws herself onto his bed, pointing the Umbrastaff 2.0 at him and saying “Alright, dingus, let’s talk.”

“What do you mean, Lu?”

“You aren’t alright, babe, and it’s kinda clear. Something’s off between us. Are you,” she bites her lip and looks at him closer. “Are you mad at me, Taako?”

“What?” he sits up and looks at her, curiously. “Lup, no, what? Why would I be mad at you?”

“We just don’t talk anymore- I don’t know,” she says, and then throws a hand in the air. “And that’s the problem! I don’t _know_ , Taako, I don’t know anything about you, not like I used to! Something’s so off, so wrong, and for a while you were _you_ , but now you’re different! What happened, Taako?”

Lup sits up and puts her staff to the side, and grabs his hands. “What happened while I was trapped?”

Taako looks at her and something in his shifts uncomfortably, and he suddenly thinks back to when Magnus ate the Philosopher’s Stone and he laughs, so suddenly that she startles. And then laughs.

And then they’re laughing again, giggling, breathless, laying on the bed with Taako’s feet on his pillow and Lup’s feet off the other edge, their hair fanning out under their heads, and then it’s quiet.

Taako turns his head to her and sighs.

“It sucked not having you. Sucked big time, because when I don’t have you... I don’t _know_ anything. And that’s, not great.”

She sighs, too, and it’s nice to have that feeling of knowing that she’s so upset that she’s left him. That she’s inadvertently done this to him. It’s nice to know she’s sorry for things she couldn’t control. “Tell me what I missed, you goober.”

And he does. He starts with what he truly remembers- how Lucretia had let him basically find his own path, and how through even a memory spell, he knew how his passion had been cooking and traveling and flare. And how he’d made his own way, with Sizzle it Up, and how he’d grown. And then he gets to Sazed, and he can feel Lup stiffen where she’s laying next to him.

He tells her about his assistant, but he also tells her about how selfish he was- how dismissive and rejective, and how that even when he discovers that Sazed was the one who poisoned the food, no relief has come from it, because good god it was still his _fault_. He’s shaking now, and crying, but Lup reaches up and squeezes his hand and says, “Tell me about when you got the gauntlet.”

They talk for an hour. Maybe more. She laughs at what she doesn’t know and tells him what she remembers- when he hears what she did to Edward, he says “Hell yeah, Lup!” and they high five. And they laugh and they cry and he remembers Hurley and Sloane and she excited tells him they’re _alive again_ , and he says they _have_ to go meet them someday. She doesn’t say anything, but he knows she agrees.

(By the end of the night, the two of them are twins again, like before but better. Taako and Lup with their love for cooking and their best friends and nerd partners that they both love very much, and the new things too, like the little boy learning magic from both of them now, and the two girlfriends that live in the cabin, and Johann’s song fresh in their mind as the day it was sent out.

It’s Taako and Lup and Lup and Taako and they both know, now.

 

They both just know.)

**Author's Note:**

> a comment would be sick as hell if yall wanna just. plop one right on down there. great.  
> my [tumblr](http://transvav.tumblr.com)


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